Pieces
by littledarkangelhippie
Summary: If they are all shattered pieces, then Bertholdt and Annie fit best together. Reiner wonders where that puts him. Ymir tries not to think about it at all. But things always do have the habit of falling together, even if they don't quite fit so well. (Reiner x Ymir) (Some Bertholdt x Annie)
1. Chapter 1

**A.N.****: So, I've had this in mind for a while, but I never got down to writing it. It's short and simple but I wanted to get it out. Here it is then.**

**This is from Reiner's point of view. Hinted Reiner x Ymir, _not _hinted Annie x Bertholdt.**

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_.**

The room is very nearly silent, their breaths filling up every space they can't. Somewhere outside he can hear crickets chirping or owls fluttering their wings, and inside he can hear the old wooden structure of the cottage groaning in the wind. The body beside him pulls the blankets away from him and mumbles something about rain and short pretty girls and, on the other bed, two other bodies shift on their sides sleepily.

Rebuilding a home takes time, and among the abandoned houses and deteriorating buildings, they've found a place to settle until their work is done. There is only one bedroom but it holds two large enough beds to fit them all. The sleeping arrangements seemed easy enough, and he had originally figured the girls would go to one and boys to the other. But his best friend was dragged into the other bed before he could say a word in edgewise, and the past few weeks have rushed past separated.

He glances over at the other bed now, rubbing the cool from his arms carefully.

Annie is sleeping in Bertholdt's arms tonight, her tiny frame swallowed up in his embrace. Her face is hidden in his chest, what yellow hair still visible strewn over the pillow and catching off the moonlight. Bertholdt curves inwardly, forming a space for her small body, his arms coiled gently around her—as if Annie Leonhart could ever possibly be breakable. They are both motionless in their sleep, the picture of peace, and Reiner faces a moment of envy or jealousy—something he quickly figures as irrational and unreasonable.

Beside him, Ymir twists herself in the sheets and faces the wall, snoring softly and stretching her arms up under her pillow.

Every night, she hisses at him, "You touch me, I rip your arm off," and proceeds to flop onto her side to sleep.

Reiner hugs himself and wills his body not to move, lest he face Ymir's wrath.

In this sense, Annie and Ymir are similar.

Except Annie places no restrictions on Bertholdt and even less on herself; some nights they're tangled up in each others limbs and angled odd and close together. Some nights, Ymir kicks him in her sleep when he watches them for too long (he sometimes wonders if she's even really asleep to begin with). Reiner can't help his curiosity; for so long Annie had held such disregard and indifference toward Bertholdt that he never would've suspected her to turn to him for any form of companionship.

Reiner isn't sure if it's the fact she refused to share a bed with _him_ that he's so irritated now.

He just knows that he feels oddly and incredibly alone.

At this point, he decides he's stared for too long, and starts to turn away in the space Ymir allows him, but he feels his eyes drift back again before he can help it, and he feels the winds in his mind begin to tick slowly.

When Annie's hand somehow ends up sliding under the waistband of Bertholdt's pants, Reiner feels his mouth go dry immediately.

He supposes now would be a great time to stop watching, but he can't tear his eyes away.

How she knows how to move her hand, he has no idea, but Bertholdt gives a soft moan and a whisper of her name and shifts himself closer to her.

If Reiner had been paying better attention, he would've heard the hitch in Ymir's snores.

This unspoken understanding passes between the two, and they move quietly about one another. Suddenly, Bertholdt is on top of Annie, her petite body dwarfed under his, and they're rocking slow against each other. The sheets sigh and the bed frame creaks and Reiner, for some reason, wishes they are louder so that there can be some sort of explanation for wanting to interrupt them. They're not even naked but he knows what they're doing and it jabs a knife in his chest deep.

There's no fathomable reason why, and Reiner isn't even sure his right mind even knows why, but he has this deep-seated urge to tear them apart.

Annie's yellow hair swirls fine against the pillowcase and he can see the blue of her eyes, locked on Bertholdt's, her breath quick, clipped, short gasps. She moves with Bertholdt easily and Reiner wonders when they'd ever found this rhythm, when they'd ever learned each other well enough to fall into step so naturally. Bertholdt's earth-hued fingers twine about locks of her hair and he bows over her in one smooth arch and he thrusts tenderly down toward her. What the sheets hide, Reiner isn't sure, but from the way Annie bites around her knuckles and Bertholdt breathes her name, he decides he may not want to.

A part of him twists into itself the longer he watches—how Bertholdt's lips trail her forehead and then the bridge of her nose, how Annie's mouth opens for him, how their tongues slide slick between them—and another awakens, knowing this was bound to happen.

Where they are all broken pieces of completely different wholes, Annie and Bertholdt fit best together.

They meld easily, tangle smooth, intertwine perfectly—two halves meant to be.

For some reason, this makes sense to Reiner, in perhaps the best and worst way.

When Annie barely muffles a whine against her palm, Reiner feels Ymir's arm loop hard around his neck, yanking him onto his side. Her piercing eyes narrow at him when his muscles stiffen, her cool, calloused hand pressing rough over his mouth to silence him.

Behind him, Annie and Bertholdt's rhythm is faltering—either quickening or slowing, he can't quite tell—and Ymir hooks her leg over his hip, holding him in place before he can turn back. For a split second, he thinks he knows what she's doing, that perhaps Ymir is affected by the situation as well, but he quickly feels stupid for thinking that.

She has him trapped, strong arms locked in place. All he can see is the shadows dipping under the folds of her shirt, the shape of her collarbone and the curves of her breasts underneath the fabric. He focuses on this, how Ymir is still oddly female even when he feels like she isn't most days, only knows Bertholdt and Annie reached what they'd been working toward when Ymir's arms begin to loosen around him.

Annie is probably in Bertholdt's arms again, both content and drowsy and hazy. Reiner can hear Annie's breaths deepen slowly, Bertholdt pull the blankets up to cover them both, the room fall silent once more.

Ymir is careful to wait until it is certain they will not wake again, and then releases Reiner and flops onto her back beside him. "Let them have this," she says, tracing the lines in the ceiling. "Once we finish fixing up another house, we can stay there and give them their privacy."

He doesn't respond, the feeling in his chest is ebbing but he isn't sure he wants it to. When she talks, it fades a little more and he doesn't know how to tell her to shut up without getting the living hell beat out of him.

"I know what you're thinking, though," she continues, "but this isn't going away. We're all we have anymore. It's just lucky they found each other."

"Are we what's left?" he asks, because he honestly needs to know.

Ymir's eyes flick over to his, and they shine like silver, something meant to kill lost by something meant to survive, and he decides the fact that she doesn't answer is answer enough. She is more certain he knows what her silence means than her words could and, in this case, she's entirely correct.

Reiner does not close any spaces between them. He knows Ymir is similar to him in this sense, and he knows what it means to feel lonely.

In a way, he supposes it's good Annie and Bertholdt don't share in that feeling.

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: So, basically this is set in the possibility that they save Annie and bring her back to their hometown, only to find it in ruins and completely abandoned. Despite everything, they decide to rebuild the place, and Ymir just decides to stick around with them. That's just the background, if you needed it.**

**Alright, so I've decided to make this into a story. See how that goes.**

**Please review, let me know what you think.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A.N.****: This will be updated at random. This really has no storyline, just snippets of their lives together and how they move on.**

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_.**

The morning mist kisses her face faintly, dusts over her cheeks and nose, whispers soft across her lips in strokes—it reminds her of sun-drenched locks and sky blue eyes. She sighs despondently into the cool air, shuts her eyes as droplets breathe over her eyelids and catch within her lashes.

She sits on the roof of the cottage they all share, legs splayed over its shingles and thatches and toes wiggling open in the breeze. She wears gray shorts and a white sleeveless shirt and she can feel how cold its beginning to get the closer they tilt toward winter; again, she wonders how many days they've spent here, there aren't many ways to tell time anymore beyond what the sky tells and their shadows allow; there's moments she isn't sure she wants to know, really. Her skin sprinkles in gooseflesh and her breasts feel weighed down as icy spirals curve down under her shirt and around her nipples almost painfully.

She licks her lips and closes her eyes, and she can pretend someone is touching her. Someone warm and pliable and gentle and _good—_before she can help it, she mumbles a name into the mist and pictures tiny hands moving slow, slow, _quick_, slow, over her body, wherever the air thinks to reach.

When her heart twists terribly, she decides she doesn't like torturing herself so much.

She bumps the backs of her ankles against the edges of the shingles, pursing her mouth into a whistle. It doesn't lift as high as the bird songs but it spins nicely under their trill and Ymir feels her throat grow thick and her jaw give.

She clenches her teeth hard enough to hurt. She tries to remember when she'd become a masochist, her memories have been fractured for so long she's almost grateful she hasn't lost herself yet.

What small mercies this life allows.

"You're awake, too," Reiner says, climbing over the side of the cottage onto the roof. He wears a simple pair of slacks and a button-up, creased into his hard-lined figure; he's barefoot, too, and his hair is cow-licked and turned up in wayward tufts. He sits beside her but not too close and she watches his legs stretch further than hers, the strong sinews in his feet jut better than hers, his muscles roll and shift easier than hers—these comparisons do something to her she isn't sure she can explain, but she suddenly feels just a little inadequate.

"Yeah," is all she says.

She'd like to say he bothers her sitting here, that he takes up too much space and scatters all of her thoughts. But he doesn't, and Ymir has never been a good liar—or maybe she is and she's even managed to fool herself somehow.

He is silent watching the sun wake up behind the sheet of clouds, squints his odd-hued eyes as the mist turns to drizzle and flicks cold against his peach skin. He doesn't cut into her reverie or stare at her feet tap, tap, tapping against the shingles.

He is silent letting her pull herself together.

It's almost natural when she says, "I miss her every day."

He already knows what she means. Maybe, in some faraway place in his mind—the loyal, selfless soldier, the gentle older brother, the vengeful puppet of a human—he misses her, too. Maybe, in his own twisted, broken way, he cared about her, too.

In this sense, Ymir supposes they're a lot alike.

"The sun reminds me of her sometimes," he says, and they both know the _sometimes_ he means are the _sometimes_ he forgets—or remembers, if truth be told—who he is; the _sometimes _the enemy lies dormant within him.

Ymir is ready to scoff at him. The comparison is superficial, when really that girl had been so much more, but perhaps it holds some truth.

The sun is fire and inescapable—there are nights Ymir is torn from her sleep burning in her core and clawing for air, unable to escape those sky blue eyes and sun-drenched hair—and it leaves blackness and cold behind and something inexplicably empty and scary.

In this sense, Ymir supposes he's right.

It might've been superficial, had his words been switched about, but Ymir somehow knows that he knows that.

Maybe, in his warped and fractured way, he loved her, too.

"Yeah," is all she says.

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: Pretty obvious who they're talking about. It's theorized a lot that Reiner only liked Christa because of his delusions, and I always figured it might've been true. But I do think he cared about her, in his own way. So, this is Ymir and Reiner missing her.**

**Alright, so, there is no main character in this. You could say it alternates between Ymir and Reiner, because I'll write about them most, but I'll throw in something from Bertholdt or Annie's perspective to keep things mixed. We'll see how it goes.**

**This is as unconventional a "love story" or "friendship" as you can get. **

**Review please! Let me know what you think so far.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A.N.****: These really have no structure at all and I love it. I find it a lot easier to write from Ymir and Reiner's perspective rather than Annie and Bertholdt's—in this story. (I've written a lot of Beruani.) **

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_.**

In one version of the story, they're all monsters. Their hands bear the blood of humanity and their tongues are bathed in deceit. They are the shadows one cannot trust and the demons still permeating what shrouds people can manage about their minds. They are the lines in every name carved within sparse cemeteries and their scant tombstones. They are the smothered whisper of the lost and forgotten.

They are the darkness stifling all hope.

He might mumble, as she bundles up in the sheets and the window panes coat in frost, that she shouldn't string herself up along with them; that it's never been her fault to take.

He'll be waiting for an answer, watching the curve of her spine tense quick. Perhaps a valiant reassurance that she does this because she _is _one of them, and that she's only doing what she thinks is right. Or, more realistically, a caustic remark upon his idiocy and a derisive, slightly less relative comment about the size of his penis. She can hear him hold his breath, because they both know she's unpredictable and anything but kind, and he's admittedly a little afraid of what she can do with such acidic words.

She only shrugs, eyes locked on a speck on the wall and fists clenched under her pillow.

Ymir has no words to explain herself, but he, thankfully, does not ask her to.

He's learned to back off at certain times and he's learned her silence means more than just uncertainty.

Around this time, they'll fall asleep.

In this version of the story, though, there is no such thing as peaceful sleep; just a break before the next day.

There are mornings she escapes to the nearest stream, tears off her clothes to scatter about her blackened feet, scrubs her body in the water until it's raw and red and aching. The colder it gets outside, the more it hurts—flesh stinging and teeth grit and air tearing through her lungs—but she never stops, won't let herself.

In this version of the story, she feels dirty and guilty and _wrong_.

Nobody questions it when she returns dripping wet and trembling hard. Bertholdt might hand her a clean blanket and Annie might offer to fix her hair, but nobody stares as if she is crazy.

They all have their way of coping.

There are these little bite marks on Bertholdt's shoulders and scratch marks on his back; she catches glimpses of them when she wakes up later than usual, as he's changing his shirt for another, fresher one. There are these faint bruises on Annie's hips, red smudges along her ivory throat; she'll see them as they ready for the day sometimes—

They torture one another in the best possible way. When Ymir sees the result of it, stained into their skin, she feels herself smile a little.

In this version of the story, they're stuck in the same place; together, one shard of the same shattered whole.

Some nights, it's cold enough her breath clouds white and her skin sprinkles in tiny bumps and her nipples are hard enough to make her flinch as the material of her shirt scrapes over them—he'll ask her, shivering beside her, why she even bothers staying anymore.

She could've left as soon as they all shut their eyes to sleep the first time, safe from the monsters they're supposed to be. They've shut their eyes to sleep just shy of a hundred now, and here she is.

And she, kicking the blankets back toward him discretely, will only shrug.

There are a million valiant words and a million ways to say he's stupid and a million jokes to make about his manhood—or lack thereof—but silence means more sometimes and Ymir prefers simplicity over complexity any day.

He'll tug the blankets up over his shoulder, sigh the kind of sigh she doesn't hear much anymore, and mutter something about her being stubborn.

Ymir will smile a little, because in one version of the story, she isn't supposed to.

"Spiteful as hell, too."

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: More and more mature themes will trickle into this. Slowly but surely.**

**This has to be the weirdest pairing, I swear.**

**Let me know what you think, review please!**


	4. Chapter 4

**A.N.****: I finished this immediately after the last chapter. Reiner's chapters tend to be a little longer. Maybe because I feel like he has a lot to say.**

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_.**

In the other version of the story, they're still just humans. Their bodies are barely filling toward adult and their minds are garbled in confusion and desire. They are the bridges between innocence and whatever the hell grown ups are supposed to be. They are the caterpillars cracking against their cocoons waiting for a spring that may not come. They are broken over the fact and twisted over their mistakes, their ignorance, their blind faith in what they hadn't understood well enough. They are the muffled roar of a beast bent to tear out from their flesh.

They are afraid.

She'll tell him, as he breathes warmth back into his hands while she's wrapped up cozy and the room grows darker, that he needs to forget; that he can't keep holding onto the past the way he does.

She'll expect him to mutter some acquiescence, solemn and morose and completely relenting. They both know he clings to memories more than people most times and they both know he's not very good at blurring out faces—it's fact. He knows she's probably mouthing the words for him and there's this deep frown on her face, and he knows she's anticipating some snark about her body and it's misplaced attributes, but he doesn't.

He only shuts his eyes, hoping she can't hear his thoughts unravel at the edges.

Reiner doesn't know how to stick his mind back together, but she, for some reason, doesn't force him to.

She's far more patient than most ever give her credit for, and just a little bit understanding.

At this point, he feels his dreams begin to overtake him.

In this version of the story, however, dreams always fall toward nightmares; fragments of who he's supposed to be versus who he thinks he is versus who they say he is.

There are stolen moments he wastes relearning himself, what he doesn't recognize anymore; the face in the mirrors he finds in the houses they repair, the hands he works with, the body still molded up for a war he isn't fighting anymore. The callouses on his palms and knuckles, the blond strands of hair on his arms and legs and trailing down his lower abdomen, the hard angles of his jaw—a stranger staring back at him sometimes.

The stubble on his chin, the span of his body across floors or abandoned beds or dirt or grass or floating weightlessly in the lake, the aching stiffness he feels between his thighs in the morning or whenever he thinks too long about short pretty girls or soft skin or arching spines or things he shouldn't be lying beside an almost-woman.

Almost, because she's more man than he is most days.

He tells Bertholdt when they're alone—Annie skinning game and Ymir slicing the meat and they chopping the wood to cook and keep warm with—and he says it's only natural, that the mind has the habit of doing these things.

He wonders when Bertholdt became so much more mature than him, but he figures it has a lot to do with Annie; she's always had that affect on him.

"There's nothing wrong with you," Bertholdt reassures, picking a splinter from his own thumb and turning knowing eyes toward him.

In this version of the story, he only feels misunderstood.

Bertholdt and Annie meld easily in their sleep—there is no fear of embarrassment or awkward, accidental slips—and here he lies rubbing his large calloused hands over his skin in an attempt to find relief, afraid they'll hear or see or scoff.

In this version of the story, they're splintered everywhere but the middle; different pieces split off from different, singular wholes—imperfect, jagged portions of nothing.

Some nights, his skin feels like ice and his body is on fire and his hands do nothing to keep him sated, Ymir might shove a corner of the blanket over for him to take and it makes it just a little more bearable. It never covers enough but he quietly wonders if anyone knows how warm Ymir is, even so far away.

She'll tell him, nudging bundles of the blanket over with her foot, that he needs to find himself again.

He can't keep roaming, lost, the way he is. He'll break before long this way.

And he'll only shut his eyes, praying she won't notice him chipping away by himself.

He can spend a whole day jeering her about how she should've been born a man, or that somebody somewhere somehow made a mistake when they made her, or that maybe they should've switched places because sometimes it only makes more sense because he can't deal with the stranger in the mirror anymore and at least Ymir has a face he can recognize. But he can't say any of this right now, he can't bring himself to.

She'll push the blankets up toward his chest with her elbow, mumbling something about him being too stupid to understand how important he is.

Reiner might feel himself smile some, because in the other version of the story, he's only human.

"Now go to sleep, stupid."

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: This story is becoming my favorite, and I have no idea why.**

**Please review, let me know what you think.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_****.**

She remembers someone once saying that they all had past lives, that they were all just reprocessed souls fixed within great sequences of events connected to each other; lessons taught and learned, lives met and forgotten, worlds separated and collided. She remembers their golden, tinkling voice forming stories out of nothing, these fictitious theories she figured were only meant to pass the time. She remembers thinking how stupid the idea was, how foolish it is to assume they never truly faded out—Ymir is, after all, a strong believer that death is akin to the end; that when a flame flickered out, the same flame cannot be revived.

When somebody dies, they are gone forever.

At least, that's her way of seeing it.

Recently, the memories have been rolling back toward the forefront of her mind and she can't quite seem to ignore them so well. As the days go by and their work lessens ever so slightly, there are less things to keep Ymir preoccupied and, therefore, less things to quell her thoughts with.

Some wistful realization dawns on her before she can help it.

Perhaps, in another life, she had been an artist, and had painted portraits until all hues of colors stained her fingers thick enough to smear. She figures this because there isn't much explanation for why she notices the things she does and sees things a certain way. She has always been intensely aware of the world and what it held; how light reflected off of surfaces and shades darkened smoothly as they turned away from sight.

How her spindly fingers could press things into being.

She used to spend her time imagining blurring porcelain skin against moonlit grass, or streaking patches of rosy pink along some fragile line of soft skin. She used to slide her thin, knobby hands across her own body and pretend she could recreate her colors by herself—dried mud or grainy dirt or the bark of massive trees, these textures clicking into place over her flesh.

This doesn't flicker in her mind until she notices how Annie's eyes match the glow of the icicles hanging off the eaves, how Bertholdt's skin looks a lot like the hot chocolate they brew in the tiny kitchen, how Reiner's hair shines eerie in the nighttime as he sleeps.

She imagines mixing the afternoon sky's brilliancy with the frost coating the shingles, the sticks of cinnamon with the milky snow and the crushed up bits of cocoa beans, the sun's glare with the moon's grin and the powdery sugar in the jars melting—forming up and breaking down, all of them manifested in _color_.

And Ymir is quick to realize how _colorful _the world is.

How _colorful _they are.

Annie is water, vivid at the center and rippling off at the edges. She fades into things but never quite disappears, ice halfway toward melting. Bertholdt is quick brush strokes and sloping lines, deep shadows and sharp highlights.

Ymir can imagine pressing their images into the walls or the windows or into the very sky; their figures twisting, how they clash in the dark—

She tries not to look most nights, but Ymir highly suspects she had been an artist in her past life and she can't help it sometimes.

Annie's soft curves meeting Bertholdt's hard angles, these two different universes colliding—it jolts everything into mishap and for a second Ymir loses her own breath.

It works out almost flawlessly and she doesn't know how.

But Reiner is different.

He's all abrupt turns and hot colors and broad spans and narrow details and intricate shadows and he doesn't fit with them at all.

Ymir wouldn't have had enough paint or patience to fit them all together; Reiner would pop out of place and shatter the image completely. And Ymir might've been a painter in her past life but she'd never been a miracle worker.

"Does it bother you?" she murmurs into her pillow, eyes unseeing turned toward the wall. "You don't makes sense with them."

When he speaks, his voice reminds her of smoke—lifting up in languid swirls and scattering over her skin, never solid enough to pierce her thoughts but enough to settle atop them gently—

"I don't make sense without them."

If Ymir could paint Reiner, he'd be all burning sunlit hues and rough trenches and vast stretches of peach and milk and some shade closer to bronze than gold. She would bruise her spindly fingers carving such details into his image, splattered haphazardly over the ground or the dirt or her own skin.

If she could recreate his colors, they would blur in layers over hers.

After all, neither one of them fit anywhere anymore. What harm could they do together?

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: Next chapter will be a little more mature. Kicking it up again.**

**Review if you want.**


	6. Chapter 6

**A.N.****: I actually finished this a while ago, I just felt a little reluctant to upload it. Not because I'm not happy with it. I just felt people might get offended at the content (considering Ymir's preferences and whatnot) but then I realized: This is a crack ship.**

**So.**

**I do not own _Shingeki no Kyojin_.**

"Do you ever get lonely?" he asks, startling her out of her thoughts.

Her spine is leaned awkwardly against the split wooden side of an old house, creaking hollow in the icy breeze. She only wears a thin pair of shorts and a tattered t-shirt, nothing at all adequate for the weather; she's freezing and tired but she doesn't feel like moving. She lifts her eyes from the patch of grass on the ground beside her to look at him, his features blackened by the night.

At the edges, his skin looks white and his hair looks golden.

"Do _you_?" she retorts, rubbing one numbed hand across her prickled arm. She levels a glare up at him when he huffs around a chuckle in response. "What are you doing out here? Go to bed, princess."

He kicks up a few bits of snow-laced dirt with the toes of his shoes. "Couldn't sleep."

She lets her head thump back against the wall, smiling a little. "Oh? Did you miss me?"

The clouds slink across the moon, settling them in darkness. The forest is stagnant off to the right, and lines of houses lie gloomy and lonesome on the other side. She isn't afraid of what the night hides, only what it can drive her to do.

Ymir isn't much for self-control.

"Did you mean something by it?" he suddenly mumbles, hands curling into fists at his sides. "Do I really not make any sense here?"

"You're still on that?" She wiggles her toes in the damp grass, willing feeling back into them. "Neither of us make sense here. Does it matter?"

He sighs, heavy and deep, and tilts his head back; his breath shows in the air now. "What are we even doing here?"

She flicks a bit of dirt from her knee. "Don't got anywhere else to go."

She feels him staring. "You do."

A laugh leaves her, abruptly. "Shut the fuck up."

There's an owl hooting somewhere in the trees, perhaps watching them scowl silently at each other. She doesn't bother to wonder what it's thinking.

"I never wanted to tell anyone," he mumbles, looking away. "I was too afraid. I—"

"I know."

"Is there something wrong with me?" The moonlight touches the skin over his ears. She can almost see his eyes.

This time, when she laughs, it sounds forced. "We're both fucked."

This time, he laughs with her.

He sits down beside her, and she notices immediately how much warmer he is than her. She knows that, right now, Bertholdt and Annie are moving under their blankets, rocking slow and gentle, keeping each other warm—reaching peaks Ymir herself has never known, or thought to know—and she knows how much it tears at Reiner.

The only two people he really cares about can find happiness and security without him.

For a minute, Ymir almost pities him.

For a minute, she understands completely.

"I always feel lonely, these days," she confesses, resting her elbows on her knees and turning her eyes back up toward the sky. The clouds streak thin over the moon, rolling on across its milky luminance. "Without her, I'm always alone."

"How romantic. That's unlike you."

She snorts, tapping her fingers over her knees. "There's a side of me you don't know, princess. I'm made up of layers, see."

"It isn't my place," he murmurs, "but I sometimes miss her, too."

"I know."

"I think I could've loved her."

"I know."

"Maybe even married her."

"I know."

"I never would've."

"...I know."

The owl is silent now, perhaps catching sight of new prey. The night feels heavier without it.

"I'm always lonely," he says, flexing his hands. He won't look at her. "All the time. It never stops."

She glances at him, notes the way his lips part to sigh and his brow furrows slowly. "Can't fill the void alone. There's only so much you can do."

He nods toward the trail back to the little cottage. "They have each other. I—"

"And we have us."

He looks at her for a long moment, frowning in confusion. "What?"

She clucks her tongue, scowling at him. "Don't look at me like that. I'm just saying." She wipes her feet across another, larger patch of grass to clean them. "I'm stuck here with you guys and I'm not going back anytime soon. I feel lonely, too, you know." She avoids his eyes, lowering her voice. "I'm human, too."

"What are you saying?" he mutters, watching her rub her hands together for warmth. He idly wonders if he should offer his shirt for her to wear, or if he should drag her back to the cottage to sleep.

"Why the hell do _we_ have to be alone?"

The following silence stretches thin until she reaches over to wrap her fingers around his, hard knuckles jabbing into her palm. He doesn't pull his hand away, at a loss for words.

"It's bad enough we're supposed to be monsters," she mutters, squeezing his hand tight enough to hurt.

He doesn't flinch.

"Who the hell else is gonna accept us?" She swallows thickly. "The only person who ever did, I can't have anymore—neither of us can."

His voice is strained. "I don't like sharing anyway."

She manages a smile. "I don't, either."

Another stretch of silence, and Ymir decides she won't waste many more words trying to get her point across. She's never been great with them anyway, her tones have always warped their meaning and her pride has never let her correct them. So she leans over, pressing his hand toward the ground under her weight, and tilts her chin an angle she isn't certain will work at this point. Her lips are chapped and there are pinpricks of blood along the lower one her teeth have caused, but she doesn't bother wondering if he'll notice any of it.

The kiss is experimental, slow and somewhat tentative. Her eyes move over his expression, hardly visible as the clouds roll across the moon again, his brow furrowing and his gaze flicking across her face, down to look at her mouth. He licks his lips and leans forward when she leans back, pressing another, firmer kiss to the corner of her mouth; perhaps he'd missed his goal.

There's a sound at the end, something soft and tiny, and it makes something rush up toward her chest warmly. His eyes look golden, his tongue swipes across his lips again and then presses lightly against the slit between her own, some hesitant request left unspoken. She opens her mouth, clenching her hand tighter around his fingers as he slides his tongue across hers.

Ymir is very suddenly warm. Reiner's other hand skims up her arm, his body turning to face hers, and tingles follow the movement.

She knows the feeling isn't entirely attached to him. The problem with loneliness—it can be deceiving.

He tilts his head to the side, slanting his mouth over hers. The kiss is wet now, and their breaths are becoming heavier, a little louder. His tongue rolls against the roof of her mouth, twists around hers, traces her teeth; they're both making these noises, needy and eager and almost whiny. Ymir wants to feel embarrassed but all she can focus on is the heat of his mouth and his hands, the excitement spiraling through her insides, the relief beginning to lift up around her chest. She smiles into the kiss, reaching up a hand to comb her fingers through his hair, pulling him closer.

He urges her down on the ground, spots of wetness sticking her shirt to her skin from the grass and the frost. He cups the back of her head and slides his other hand down her side. She shifts and accommodates his larger frame, fingers splaying across his back. She can feel him, already hard against her thigh, and she isn't sure whether it's revulsion or fear she feels in response, just that she is suddenly very aware of how vulnerable they both are right now.

He's throbbing, twitching—she knows his arousal has more to do with the sensations between them than actual emotion; he feels it, too—and he begins to grind into her. She opens her legs to cradle his hips between them, hooking her knees over his waist and sliding her hands under his shirt. She arches up to meet his pace, and feels him rapidly hardening further, feels him rubbing into the nub at the apex of her folds, feels him grind hard into her sensitive spot.

They both gasp sharply.

She scratches his chest trying to tug his shirt open, buttons popping, flung into the darkness or lost in the clumps of frost, moving her palms over his chest and the ridges of muscle under his skin. Her thumbs play around his nipples and his breath hitches. He pushes her shirt up over her chest, tracing the smoothness of her stomach and the soft mounds of her breasts. He bends his head down to suck on her pulse point, nibble her ear, and she grits her teeth around a gasp.

His arm wraps around her waist, pulling her tighter against him, hips thrusting harder down against her. She can feel her fluids sticking against the fabric of her underwear, her core pulsing with want.

"_Fuck_," she hisses in his ear, nails digging into his back hard.

It's quick from there.

He tugs her shorts down her thighs, hands skimming down toward her hips, fingers skipping quick across her abdomen, her pelvis, this spot between her legs. His mouth moves hot over her collarbone, leaving wet kisses in his wake, his tongue searing into the sides of her breasts, pressed against her nipples. His fingers delve deep inside of her, she cries into the air, over and over and over again. Her noises are breathless, choked out of her. His words senseless mumbled into the skin of her stomach, her hip, her pelvis.

A loud, strangled gasp.

His tongue sliding into her, his hands gripping apart her thighs, his nose pressing into that nub, his breaths burning puffs against her quivering flesh. Her arching spine, her fingers tangled hard into his hair, her twitching hips, the pleasure splitting her in half—

She's giving soft sobs around her gasps, she's never felt anything this good—frantic nights spent searching, touching, dreaming of pretty blue eyes and sunny hair and tiny hands hadn't brought her much more than frustration and disappointment—and she can feel him doubling his efforts. His fingers joining his work, pumping quick as he flicks his tongue over her nub. His breaths burn her already sweltering skin, the hand on her thigh pushes them further apart until she opens up for him, tongue sliding slow and fingers curling and twisting and pumping until she's writhing.

And when she falls apart, she's biting down on her fist to keep from screaming. Her back arches up and her toes curl and her breath catches in her throat.

The next thing she registers, he's leaning over her, hard-lined figure back-lit by silver flossy clouds and a crescent moon grinning down at them both. He's breathing just as hard as her, if not harder, and she can smell a new scent in the air—perhaps the same thing she tastes when he gives her another, sloppier kiss. She barely returns it, thoughts too hazy and confused to process a single thing and limbs too heavy to move.

Ymir just knows she wants to fall asleep for a few long hours.

He seems to realize that, when her eyes droop and her words come out slurred, and fixes her clothing back into their proper place. Under normal circumstances, she would've kicked him in the face and then slammed his head into the hardest surface she could find when he lifts her up in his arms, but she's already drifting and her consciousness clicks on and off as he walks them back to the cottage.

The next thing she knows, he's pulling the blankets up to her shoulders and sliding into bed beside her.

Annie and Bertholdt are wrapped up together in their sleep, soundly dreaming.

Ymir only has enough sense to roll toward the wall before blacking out.

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: I hope you liked it. **

**Please review, if you'd like. No pressure.**


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